The story behind a Great War postcard - Tony Allen

(2) The Angel of Mons postcard

Perhaps the most enduring legend of the Great War was that
of the "Angel of Mons."The legend first
appeared in a short story titled The Bowmen, by Arthur Machen, which appeared
in the London Evening News on 29th September 1914. Coincidentally, the 29th was
also the feast day of St Michael and All Angels.

The card on the left, “THE ANGELS OF MONS” was from the
painting by W.H. Margetson. It was published by ‘A. Vivian Mansell & Co.,
Fine Art Publishers, London’ and was ‘No, 1017.’

The story starts on
Sunday 30th August after Machen had read in his morning newspaper about the
retreat of the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) from Mons. "…I have not
forgotten the impression that made on my mind. I seemed to see a furnace of
torment and death and agony and terror… and in the middle of the burning was
the British Army." He also said that the inspiration for the story came to him
in church, "as the blue incense floated above the gospel book on the desk
between the tapers."

In the story, St. George, with an army of medieval
English bowmen, appeared in the sky and annihilated the Germans with ghostly
arrows at a critical moment during the retreat and saved the B.E.F. Machen
later said that he felt he could have told the story better and added, "If I
failed in the art of letters I had succeeded, unwittingly, in the art of
deceit."

The Bowmen appeared at a time when people were looking for a miracle
and perhaps because it appeared in a newspaper, the story seemed to have some
credibility. Whatever the reason, many people in Britain were ready to believe
that heavenly intervention saved the B.E.F. from total defeat.

As the story
gained more coverage, the bowmen turned into angels. Arthur Waghorn asked his
readers in The War Budget"Are the angels on our side in this great struggle
for liberty and honour? For many readers the sky has become as full of visions
as the sea of salt."

Indeed, it had;
public demand for information describing spectral visions and apparitions during
the British retreat ensured a steady supply of publications on the subject. For
example, Harold Begbie, a popular writer at the time, wrote On the side of the
Angels, a sermon by G.P. Kerry entitled Guardian Angels was then produced in
print, and the Theosophical Publishing Society produced Angels, Saints and
Bowmen of Mons by I.E Taylor. Periodicals like The Occult Review and Light then
took up the story, followed by numerous parish magazines throughout the country.

With such
widespread coverage, it was perhaps inevitable that more people should come
forward to announce that they too had friends or relatives who were soldiers
and who had "seen the Angels of Mons with their own eyes."

It seems that the
idea of ‘God on our side’, gave many people consolation and hope for the
future. Despite his protests that the tale was purely a figment of his
imagination, Machen said "Great numbers of people made up their minds that the
story was true from beginning to end." His original article in the Evening
News, which had started the whole thing off, was published in an expanded
version in a booklet and within a year, 1,000,000 copies had been sold.

Was the tale pure
fiction? Of course… and yet…the eminent
military historian the late John Terraine said, that as early as 5th September 1914,
Brigadier-General John Charteris recorded in a letter that the story of the
Angels of Mons was "going strong through the 2nd Corps…how the angel of the
lord on the traditional white horse and clad all in white with flaming sword,
faced the advancing Germans at Mons and forbade their further progress." This
was three weeks before Machen’s story of The Bowmen appeared in print.